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TThis is Andrea's blog. Here, she will be reviewing a photography of her choice.
Diorama Map
"Nishino's large compositions bring to mind the flattened perspectives of medieval paintings crossed with David Hockney photo collages, with a bit of the dazzle of Daniel Gordon’s colorful, internet-sourced still lifes. But Nishino's project seems both sobering and loopy in its inefficiency."( HELFAND, 2016)
Photographer Sohei Nishino creates composite images of cities, which he calls Diorama Map. For each new work, he visits and walks around the chosen city, while shooting landmarks, people, and architecture with a film camera. The process takes months of photographing and exploring each city. He then arranges the thousands of images by hand and creates a Map. This results in a record of Nishino’s personal experience and memories with the city.
"Nishino's giddy maps remind us that cities, for all their giddy chaos, are at the core, miraculous human achievements." (Ewing,
From afar, the picture may seem like a bird’s eye view map of the city, but when inspected closely the shift of perspective between the different photos in his work makes itself apparent. As art collector Loring Knoblauch puts it "It’s as if he’s fashioned a robust multi-dimensional model of a city (or perhaps a memory of a city), but tried to do so within the constraints of a single plane." Looking closely at the work evokes the feeling of exploring and discovering the city through the eyes of the photographer.